Sonnets from the Portuguese XLIII.

How do I love thee?

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Summaries
We Real Cool (Gwendolyn Brooks) - Gwendolyn Brooks' poem "We Real Cool" is
short, but it delivers a powerful message about dropping out of school. Through
portraying the carefree lives and eventual tragic fates of seven dropouts, Brooks
argues that dropping out of school and roaming the streets is not "cool," but rather
it is a dead-end street.

We Real Cool" is a short, yet powerful poem by Gwendolyn Brooks that sends a
life learning message to its reader. The message Brooks is trying to send is that
dropping out of school and roaming the streets is in fact not "cool" but in actuality a
dead end street.

Brooks conveys her message in an ironic manner, which is presented in the title of
the poem. Before actually reading the 10 line poem the first thing that grabs the
reader's attention is the title. After reading the title "We Real Cool" one would
assume that the intent of the poem is going to be about a group of people who are
fortunate and live a flamboyant lifestyle. This is not the case for the "seven players"
in Brooks poem. After reading the entire poem, the true meaning is revealed. "We
Real Cool" focuses on the life of "seven players" who drop out of school. Their daily
life iscarefree and consists of playing pool, drinking alcohol, and using vulgar
language. Brooks elucidates that this "cool" lifestyle only leads to death.

The poem is written in first person allowing the pool players to speak for
themselves. A few of the lines in the poem are missing verbs, for example "we real
cool" is missing the word are. The language used coincides with the player's lack of
education. This is evident in the poem when we are told they "left school." We later
learn that instead of attending school the players go to a pool hall. The name of the
pool hall, "Golden Shovel" contributes to the theme of the poem. The golden shovel
has a deeper meaning and serves as a symbol. The so called "Golden" lifestyle of
the players will eventually cost them their lives. In return they will eventually be
["shoveled"] in their grave. Several of the lines in Brooks poem begin with words
that start with the same consonant letter; this is an example of alliteration. The [l]
sound in lurk-late, the [str] sound in strike-straight, and the [j] sound in jazz-June.
The alliteration used allows the poem to flow smoothly.
 Brooks makes great use of rhyme throughout the poem. She uses words such as
"cool", "school", "sin", and "gin." These are external rhymes which appear at the
end of lines. The rhyme scheme used compliments the theme, since it is the
directed towards a young audience. The reason we know that Brooks is trying to
attract a young crowd is because she is talking about youth who are suppose to be
attending school. The poem is given an up tempo beat, almost like a rap. This rap
like sound may also help attract young readers.

This poem describes the lifestyle of young rebels. They are "cool having left
"school", and "die soon." The seven players in the poem were victims of self
destruction. Brooks makes the theme obvious to the reader with the reader with the
use of irony. The first line of the poem reads "we real cool" and the last line read
"we die soon." So, in other words the players were too cool for their own good. Poet
Gwendolyn Brooks expresses the way she feels about school drop outs in a short,
yet forcible poem.

How Do I Love Thee (Elizabeth Barett- Browning) - After the annotation and
note-taking is completed, you are ready to write a paragraph analysis of "How do I
Love Thee." I've included a sample paragraph, which I give you permission to use
with proper attribution.

Elizabeth Barret Browning in "How Do I Love Thee" expresses the eternal nature of
love and its power to overcome everything, including death. Line 1 serves as the
poem's introduction and captures the reader's attention with a simple question,
"How do I Love Thee?" The remainder of the poem serves as an answer as the
poem's speaker counts the ways. The repetition of "I love thee" serves as a constant
reminder, but it is the depth of love, not the quantity of love, that gives the poem its
power: She loves. For example, "the depth and breadth and height / My soul can
reach," and "To the level of every day's / Most quiet need." The ultimate expression
of her enduring love occurs in the last line which states her love will be stronger
"after death."

1. The poem is a sonnet, a 14-line poem written in iambic pentameter.

Although it does not follow the precise rhyme scheme of an Italian sonnet, the
 poem's structure follow the form of an Italian sonnet, consisting of an octet - the
first eight lines, and the sestet, the final six lines. The end of the octet is called
the volta, meaning the turning point.

2. In the octet the poem's speaker lists the depth of her love through
hyperbole, or exaggeration, a fitting poetic device for a love poem. The sestet
discusses a more mature love, a love that transcends all, including death.

3. In the first line the speaker expresses her desire to "count the ways" she
loves. She only mentions six, a lot for a 14-line poem, sure, but not as many as I
expected. The expression of the intensity of her love, therefore, should not be
measured in the quantity of expression but in the quality or depth of expression,
a depth which equals "the depth and breadth and height / My soul can reach," "to
the level of every day's / Most quiet need," and a love that will continue after
death.

4. Repetition - The repetition of "How do I Love Thee" emphasizes the intensity

of the speaker's love.

5. Theme - The poem's theme can be found in the final six lines: True love
overcomes all and is eternal in nature.

Robert and Elizabeth

Her 1844 volume Poems made her one of the most popular writers in the country at
the time and inspired Robert Browning to write to her, telling her how much he
loved her work. He had been an admirer of her poetry for a long time and wrote "I
love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett" praising their "fresh strange
music, the affluent language, the exquisite pathos and true new brave
thought". Kenyon arranged for Robert Browning to meet Elizabeth on 20 May 1845,
in her rooms, and so began one of the most famous courtships in literature.
Elizabeth had produced a large amount of work and had been writing long before
Robert Browning had. However, he had a great influence on her writing, as did she
on his: two of Barretts most famous pieces were produced after she met
Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese and Aurora Leigh. Robert's Men and
Women is a product of that time. Some critics, however, point to him as an
undermining influence: "Until her relationship with Robert Browning began in 1845,
Barretts willingness to engage in public discourse about social issues and about
aesthetic issues in poetry, which had been so strong in her youth, gradually
diminished, as did her physical health. As an intellectual presence and a physical
being, she was becoming a shadow of herself". Her doctors strongly encouraged her
to go to the warmer climates of Italy to avoid another English winter, but her father
would not hear of it.

"Portuguese" was a pet name Browning used. Sonnets from the Portuguese also
refers to the series of sonnets of the 16th-century Portuguese poet Lus de Cames;
in all these poems she used rhyme schemes typical of the Portuguese sonnets. The
verse-novel Aurora Leigh, her most ambitious and perhaps the most popular of her
longer poems, appeared in 1856. It is the story of a female writer making her way in
life, balancing work and love. The writings depicted in this novel are based on
similar, personal experiences that Elizabeth suffered through herself. The North
American Review praised Elizabeths poem in these words: "Mrs. Brownings poems
are, in all respects, the utterance of a womanof a woman of great learning, rich
experience, and powerful genius, uniting to her womans nature the strength which
is sometimes thought peculiar to a man".

The courtship and marriage between Robert Browning and Elizabeth were carried
out secretly as she and her siblings were convinced their father would disapprove.
Six years his elder and an invalid, she could not believe that the vigorous and
worldly Robert Browning really loved her as much as he professed to. After a private
marriage at St. Marylebone Parish Church, they honeymooned in Paris. Browning
then imitated his hero Shelley by spiriting his wife off to Italy, in September 1846,
which became her home almost continuously until her death. Elizabeth's loyal
nurse, Wilson, who witnessed the marriage, accompanied the couple to Italy.

Mr. Barrett disinherited Elizabeth, as he did each of his children who married.
Elizabeth had foreseen her father's anger but not expected the disgust of her
brothers, who saw Browning as a lower-class gold-digger and refused to see him. As
Elizabeth had some money of her own, the couple was reasonably comfortable in
Italy, and their relationship together was harmonious. The Brownings were well
respected in Italy, and even famous. Elizabeth grew stronger and in 1849, at the
age of 43, between four miscarriages, she gave birth to a son, Robert Wiedemann
Barrett Browning, whom they called Pen. Their son later married but had no
legitimate children. At her husband's insistence, the second edition of
Elizabeths Poems included her love sonnets; as a result, her popularity increased
(as well as critical regard), and her position was confirmed.

The couple came to know a wide circle of artists and writers including, in
Italy, William Makepeace Thackeray, sculptor Harriet Hosmer (who, she wrote,
seemed to be the "perfectly emancipated female") and Harriet Beecher Stowe. In
1849 she met Margaret Fuller and the female French novelist George Sand in 1852,
whom she had long admired. They met with Tennyson in Paris, and John
Forster, Samuel Rogers, and the Carlyles in London, later befriending Charles
Kingsley and John Ruskin.

Tonight I Can Write (Pablo Neruda)

Poem Summary

Lines 1 - 4

The theme of distance is introduced in the opening line. When the speaker informs
the reader,
"Tonight I can write the saddest lines," he suggests that he could not previously. We
later learn that his overwhelming sorrow over a lost lover has prevented him from
writing about their relationship and its demise. The speaker's constant juxtaposition
of past and present illustrate his inability to come to terms with his present isolated
state. Neruda's language here, as in the rest of the poem, is simple and to the point,
suggesting the sincerity of the speaker's emotions. The sense of distance is again
addressed in the second and third lines as he notes the stars shivering "in the
distance." These lines also contain images of nature, which will become a central
link to his memories and to his present state. The speaker contemplates the natural
world, focusing on those aspects of it that remind him of his lost love and the
cosmic nature of their relationship. He begins writing at night, a time when darkness
will match his mood. The night sky filled with stars offers him no comfort since they
"are blue and shiver." Their distance from him reinforces the fact that he is alone.
However, he can appreciate the night wind that "sings" as his verses will, describing
the woman he loved.

Lines 5 - 10

Neruda repeats the first line in the fifth and follows it with a declaration of the
speaker's love for an unnamed woman. The staggered repetitions Neruda employs
throughout the poem provide thematic unity. The speaker introduces the first detail
of their relationship and points to a possible reason for its demise when he admits
"sometimes she loved me too." He then reminisces about being with her in "nights
like this one." The juxtaposition of nights from the past with this night reveals the
change that has taken place, reinforcing his sense of aloneness. In this section,
Neruda links the speaker's lover with nature, a technique he will use throughout the
poem to describe the sensual nature of their relationship. In the eighth line, the
speaker remembers kissing his love "again and again under the endless sky" - a sky
as endless as, he had hoped, their relationship would be. An ironic reversal of line
six occurs in line nine when the speaker states, "She loved me, sometimes I loved
her too." The speaker may be offering a cynical statement of the fickle nature of
love at this point. However, the eloquent, bittersweet lines that follow suggest that
in this line he is trying to distance himself from the memory of his love for her and
so ease his suffering. Immediately, in the next line he contradicts himself when he
admits, "How could one not have loved her great still eyes." The poem's
contradictions create a tension that reflects the speaker's desperate attempts to
forget the past.

Lines 11 14

In line eleven Neruda again repeats his opening line, which becomes a plaintive
refrain. The repetition of that line shows how the speaker is struggling to maintain
distance, to convince himself that enough time has passed for him to have the
strength to think about his lost love. But these lines are "the saddest." He cannot
yet escape the pain of remembering. It becomes almost unbearable "to think that I
do not have her. To feel that I have lost her." His loneliness is reinforced by "the
immense night, still more immense without her." Yet the poetry that he creates
helps replenish his soul, "like dew to the pasture."

Lines 15 18

In line fifteen the speaker refuses to analyze their relationship. What is important to
him is that "the night is starry and she is not with me" as she used to be on similar
starry nights. "This is all" that is now central to him. When the speaker hears
someone singing in the distance and repeats "in the distance," he reinforces the
fact that he is alone. No one is singing to him. As a result, he admits "my soul is not
satisfied."

Lines 19 26

In these lines the speaker expresses his longing to reunite with his love. His sight
and his heart try to find her, but he notes, "she is not with me." He again
remembers that this night is so similar to the ones they shared together. Yet he
understands that they "are no longer the same." He declares that he no longer loves
her, "that's certain," in an effort to relieve his pain, and admits he loved her greatly
in the past. Again linking their relationship to nature, he explains that he had "tried
to find the wind to touch her hearing" but failed. Now he must face the fact that
"she will be another's." He remembers her "bright" body that he knows will be
touched by another and her "infinite eyes" that will look upon a new lover.

Lines 27 32

The speaker reiterates, "I no longer love her, that's certain," but immediately
contradicts himself, uncovering his efforts at self deception when he admits, "but
maybe I love her." With a world-weary tone of resignation, he concludes, "love is so
short, forgetting is so long." His poem has become a painful exercise in forgetting.
In line twenty-nine he explains that because this night is so similar to the nights in
his memory when he held her in his arms, he cannot forget. Thus he repeats, "my
soul is not satisfied." In the final two lines, however, the speaker is determined to
erase the memory of her and so ease his pain, insisting that his verses (this poem)
will be "the last verses that I write for her."